Paul Grice was an academic, known for his work on the philosophy of meaning in language which has influenced the field of semantics. One of his areas of study was how the need to be cooperative shapes conversational norms. He summarises this in a collection of four maxims, as follows.

• Quantity: provide an adequate amount of information, no more.
• Quality: ensure the information is accurate.
• Relation: provide information relevant to the matter at hand
• Manner: express information clearly and simply.

#Quantity

An ‘opportunity for  improvement’ in my own life. Simply put it means not waffling. Responses should provide an adequate and full response, but no more than is called for.

#Quality

The quality of the information that one provides should be high. That is to say that it should be accurate and well evidenced rather than supposition or hearsay.

#Relation

Responses should relate to the matter at hand. That is to say they should be comprised of relevant, non tangential information.

#Manner

Responses should be delivered in a well-ordered manner, choosing language and phrases that avoid ambiguity and are easily understood by all. They should also be to the point.

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It provides the learner with a descriptive model or schema of the information that is to be presented. This helps the learner to contextualise and file away the information that follows.
The name was coined by David Ausubel, an Educational Psychologist from New York.

#How They Work

Ausubel believed that the most important determinant of learning is what the learner already knows. Therefore, it is more difficult to describe something that is new, novel or outside of your learner’s experience.

One of the challenges of creating innovative apps and services is that we need to explain to the user how to use them in an easily understandable and memorable fashion.

#Two Types of Advance Organiser

#1. Comparative Advance Organiser

Comparing the subject to another subject that the learner is already familiar with. Useful for for when the learners have some knowledge of similar things that can be built upon.

#Example

VizEat is like Airbnb, but for restaurants.

Comparative Advance Organisers are often based on analogy and metaphor.

#2. Expository Advance Organiser

Useful for for when the learners have little or no knowledge of the topic and are unlikely to already have sufficient points of reference for a comparison to suffice.

#Example

On the Design Council’s website they have a page about design process. Prior to going into detail about the various steps of the process they provide an overview diagram of the process accompanied by a brief description. As this advance organiser is presented in both linguistic and visual form it should be better for recognition and recall than if only one were used according to Dual Coding theory.

The “Double Diamond” Design Process model is divided into four distinct phases: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver, it maps the divergent and convergent stages of the design process, showing the different modes of thinking that designers use.

#More on Advance Organisers

Universal Principals of Design (2003-2010) Lidwell, Holden, Butler
http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/advance_organisers.htm
http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/advance_organisers.htm
http://www.glnd.k12.va.us/resources/graphicalorganizers/ [FUGLY warning]

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In 2010 I passed up on the opportunity to attend Mark Boulton’s design workshop at dContruct. It was £350 and I didn’t feel that I could justify the expense. I later came to feel that I had been shortsighted, and that I had missed the opportunity to learn from an expert whose perspective I admired.

I’ve spent a good bit of time studying grid systems, read key books by Josef Müller-Brockmann, Timothy Samara and Khoi Vinh.

These books are great, however when I tried to apply what I had learned I had trouble with niggly edge cases and realised there were gaps in my understanding. I found workarounds but I have always had nagging doubts about them. So when I saw that Mark Boulton was presenting a workshop on grids at this years dConstruct I decided to take a risk. And I am so glad that I did.

Despite being only a day long, a third of which seemed to be tea-breaks, I learned a lot. Many of the gaps in my knowledge have been filled and that I have a strong practical foundation to take my work forward in this area.

#Work and Critique

After a whistle-stop primer on the history, benefits, goals and challenges of implementing grids we got down to work. Most of the day was spent working on a layout task, putting together a web page using a compound grid.

For most of us this was the first time that we had used a compound grid. While we worked Mark wandered around the room providing pointers and answering questions.

There were two rounds of iteration and critique on the layouts. Initially I bottled putting any work forward for critique, noting that there was some serious design talent in the room. I realised however that the best bit of the day was the opportunity to to get peer review and critique from a room full of designers led by Mark Boulton. So, with a degree of trepidation, I put my work up for the second round of critique. And I am so glad that I did. Apart from being pleasantly surprised with the positive response, I got some useful critique about an aberrant pull-quote that had been bugging me and was able to quickly fix it as a result of the crit.

The format was great: Fast-paced, practical and challenging. Critiquing a bunch of different solutions to the problem you spent the day trying to solve is a great way to consolidate your learning. It also proved to be a catalyst for Mark and the other designers in the room to share tips, tricks and solutions to common problems and niggly edge-cases.

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A model for describing when an individual will be suitably motivated to act.

We encounter many triggers to action. Sometimes we act, and heed the call to action, sometimes we don’t. This framework attempts to describe the circumstances under which an individual may be motivated to enact a behaviour.

The Fogg Behaviour Model was published by Dr. BJ Fogg in 2009 and revised in 2010. Dr Fogg founded the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, where he directs research in “Behaviour Design”: a systematised way of changing human behaviour.

#The model

B=mat

In a given context a behaviour (B) occurs when there is sufficient motivation (m), a trigger (t) is experienced and they have sufficient ability (a).  To put it another way: The individual needs to be sufficiently motivated to act when prompted — if the cost is not too great.

Motivation

The factors that may cause an individual to act.

• Pleasure / Pain
• Hope / Fear
• Social acceptance / Rejection

Levels of motivation are not constant and come in waves: People are keener to diet having watched an inspiring programme about a new diet (hope) rather than when they are grocery shopping a hangover (pain). Peaks of motivation are rare and present a great opportunity to promote future engagement.

Trigger

Prompts an action. The action prompted should be tailored to the ease with which the user can take it and their level of motivation.

• High motivation : Low ability. Provide a lightweight way for the individual to engage with you at some level. They may be short of time but keen to try your service so maybe get them to sign up for a newsletter / launch update email.
• Low motivation : High ability. Provide a high level of incentive/motivation to get your potential user over the hump. Maybe a bit of social proof combined with a time limited offer will encourage action. The greater the incentive the more you can potentially ask of the user.
• High motivation : High ability. If we feel that the user is be highly motivated this is the time to make a big ask that will structure future behaviour, or reduce the barriers to it. This could be something like setting up and personalising your account, arranging an appointment or similar.

Ability

The scarcity or abundance of the following resources in the given context:

• Time
• Money
• Physical Effort
• Mental Effort
• Social Deviance – Is this a socially accepted behaviour?
• Routine – Doing something for the first time will have some attendant cost in terms of time to get set-up, getting your head around it etc.

#Examples

#Less Motivation : Greater Ability

For example Jenny is a designer and she sees some new design software that will be released soon. The software looks like it has potential, and may prove useful. She isn’t hugely motivated however and is undecided about whether to invest time and attention learning more about it. Because the effort involved in being notified when it launches very low – just enter your email address – she decides to go ahead and give them her email.

The marketers have succeeded despite not being able to offer any great motivation because they made the cost of action so low. If they had asked Jenny to fill out a longer form they may not have succeeded because the cost in terms of cognitive effort and time required may have tipped the scales too far for the motivation to have been sufficient.

#More Motivation : Less Ability

Company X has a caption competition running on their website; the prize is an iPad. In order to to enter a competitor must like Company X on Facebook and then fill out an entry form that requires you to think up a witty caption.

The cost is quite high:

• Time: It requires a at least a couple of minutes to be invested in the process, more if a witty caption does not spring to mind.
• Mental effort: You cannot simply click a button or just enter an email address. In order to win the competition a degree of inventiveness will be required.
• Social Deviance: You will be publicly liking Company X. This may well appear in your friends timelines. Will you lose friends or respect by spamming them with a corporate like?

If the trigger catches you at the right time the motivation may be high enough to persuade you to stop what you were doing, risk social stigma, and put some thought into winning this valuable prize.

#Further reading & viewing

• Video: BJ Fogg at PARC on how to really change your habits
• behaviourmodel.org
• Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

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#The pursuit of pleasure

Canadian born anthropologist Dr Lionel Tiger published a book in 1992 entitled ‘The pursuit of pleasure’. The book discusses pleasure and the part that it has played in evolution and survival.

The ideas have subsequently been popularised and developed by Patrick Jordan as the ‘Four Pleasure Framework’ and are widely used in product design. Donald Norman also draws upon the ideas in his book ‘Emotional Design’.

In the book he proposes a Four Pleasure model that categorises the four broad types of pleasure enjoyed by people:

• Physio-pleasure
• Psycho-pleasure
• Socio-pleasure
• Ideo-pleasure

Physio-pleasure

Physio-pleasure is a sensual pleasure that is derived from touching, smelling, hearing and tasting something. It also conveyed by an object’s effectiveness in performing the action for which it is designed.

#Examples of physio-pleasure

Some magazines (I’m thinking of Eye Magazine) have both a wonderful texture due to the quality of the paper stock combined with a fantastic smell as you open it’s pages. Leather goods have a similar effect – more for some than others.

A refined and well engineered tool such as a Wüsthof cooks knife has a pleasing heft and balance that is noted immediately upon using the tool. It also conveys a pleasure to the user of being highly effective — making light work of the often mundane tasks for which it is employed.

When we close a car door and it makes a satisfying clunk we experience a certain pleasure. This is a combination of the acoustic feedback that the door is definitely closed, combined with an aesthetic enjoyment of the sound itself. The sound will have been engineered to produce this response.

Psycho-pleasure

Psycho-pleasures are pleasures that are derived from cognition, discovery, knowledge, and other things that satisfy the intellect.

#Examples of psycho-pleasure

The first time that you pick up an iPod/iPhone/iPad and start playing with it you quickly get an idea of how it works. Even if you don’t get it straight away, it is learnable, memorable and pretty consistent — you soon get to know the ropes. This leads to a certain sense of satisfaction because, largely, ‘it just works’.

Games are enjoyable because they present challenges that we need to figure out. Whether finishing the Rubik’s cube, or achieving checkmate in a few moves, there is a cognitive-emotional pleasure that is derived from such activities.

Horizon is one of my favourite programs. The reason that I enjoy it so much is because I get to discover new ideas and expand my mind with thoughts of m-theory and other crazy science. I may not wholly, or indeed even partially, understand it but I do enjoy the act of thinking about it.

Socio-pleasure

Socio-pleasures, as the name suggests, are concerned with pleasures derived from social signifiers of belonging, social-enablers and other social self-identification factors.

#Examples of socio-pleasure

Facebook is a tool that enables people to have a greater sense of community and involvement with one another. Often geographically disparate friends can still retain a foothold in one another’s lives.
For most web designers, especially a few years ago, owning an iPhone was more or less de rigeur in the same way that a Blackberry is for crack dealers and bankers.

At school, wearing a pair of Adidas-like ‘one stripe too many’ trainers in PE would lead to mockery. No-one was suggesting that the shoes were of a lesser quality, simply that they said you were too poor or socially unaware to have the ‘proper’ ones.

Certain objects or features provide a talking point, a sense of identity, a way to differentiate and create a starting point for dialogue. This could be a Mohican, an audiophile sound system or a folly that you have built on your estate.

Ideo-pleasure

Ideo-pleasures then are pleasures that are linked to our ideals, aesthetically, culturally and otherwise.

#Examples of ideo-pleasure

I have a mug from Ikea. It is largely unremarkable and utilitarian, however I always glean a small moment of ideo-pleasure when I wash it and place on the draining rack as it has a really elegant design feature. It has grooves scored into the base so that all of the water on the base runs off when it is placed upside down. Lesser mugs pool this water, often leading to a suprise when the mug is taken from the draining rack. This reflects my own ideological standpoint that everything can be made better, often through very small and elegant changes.

Aesthetic sensibilities are often closely linked to our ideological or cultural identity and determine to a great extent the pleasure a product may bring. Many people that get a great deal of pleasure from driving VW camper vans. They are often impractical, unreliable and relatively expensive in comparison to other vehicles that offer greater utility.

There is a clear business case for producing local/green/fair-trade produce as people derive pleasure from ethical shopping. Hence all of the heritage-style, Clarendon on matte-finish packaged products that reflect a faux-traditional, good old days aesthetic.

#See also:

http://www.uigarden.net/english/design-for-the-dream-economy

http://www.chi2008.org/altchisystem/submissions/submission_jane66_0.pdf

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